Why a Silver Standard?

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen uses a silver standard. That is, the prices for adventuring items are quoted in silver pieces and the experience points needed to gain levels (which approximately track the numbers of OD&D) match up with silver pieces, not the gold pieces of OD&D.

It's not original.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess does it. And even Gary Gygax himself implied that he might have done it if given the chance to do Dungeons & Dragons over again.

Why?

Well, first of all, it's more historically accurate. Silver has always been much more plentiful than gold (while remaining rare, with additional stocks difficult or costly to obtain) and thus better suited to minting coins. Here are some rough facts:

1. The silver penny of Medieval, Renaissance or Tudor times in England was about the size and weight of a modern dime.
2. The silver shilling (worth twelve pennies) was about the weight of an Eisenhower Dollar, though with a somewhat smaller volume.
3. Very very roughly, and taking into account expected oscillations, debasement and subsequent inflations, in-kind payments and so on, a shilling was often equal to a day's wage of a farmer or manual laborer. Or conversely, it was about what you needed to pay for a day of food and shelter. People often cut pennies into quarters to pay for cheap items.
4. Historically, gold was always 5-20 times more valuable by weight. Or since gold was twice as dense as silver, 2-10 times more valuable by volume.
5. Thus, depending on the ratio of gold to silver, one could carry a year's salary in a belt pouch and a large fortune in a small sack.
6. Silver shillings or gold sovereigns—'pound' coins equal to 20 shillings—weighed about half as much as the 1/10th of a pound stipulated in OD&D and AD&D. (For much of the period in question, 'pound' and sometimes even 'shilling' were so-called units of account, rather than names for actual coins.)

For More Things in Heaven and Earth (my '16th century' proto-Zylarthen) I created a very fussy (but fairly historically accurate) table of coin weights and values:

(An encumbrance 'item' is roughly equal to five pounds of weight, similar to the encumbrance scheme of Zylarthen.)

It was wise to jettison the above for Zylarthen, but I will probably use it in my pending 'Tudor' or 'Elizabethan' supplement.

However, much more important than 'realism' was the way that the monetary values and exchange rates of OD&D completely undercut a robust and varied coin system. Since even mundane and cheap items were expressed in terms of gold, it wasn't clear what purpose copper and silver really served. Why would any but unintelligent monsters hoard such coins? But the Dungeon Expedition example in The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures along with of course the Treasure Tables themselves, seemed to suggest that they did—'The chest with the poison needle is full of copper pieces—appears to be about 2,000 of them'. It was as if modern day gangsters did much of their business in pennies, going around with sacks of them, keeping them in elaborately protected safes, etc.

So for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen I, so to speak, shifted things one column to the left, with the standard metal of account now being in the middle of the other two. I kept the variance in values from lowest value coin to highest value coin at 1:50 the same as in OD&D, though this is much narrower than the 1:200 variance in AD&D that many of us are most familiar with. Here are the relevant comparisons:

OD&D:

AD&D:

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen:

The 1:5 copper to silver exchange rate allowed copper pieces to still maintain some meaningful value and give men and monsters a reason for hoarding them. On the other hand, I wanted gold to become something truly valuable, sort of like the status of gems in OD&D, which I thought made more sense both from the standpoint of 'realism' as well as how gold is usually treated in fantasy stories, fairytales and the like. Basically I wanted to give it more allure than just something you use to buy a coil of rope with.

I've heard that referees wanting to switch from a gold to a silver standard often run into opposition from their players—'he's taking our gold away!'. So I would be interested to hear from any Seven Voyages of Zylarthen play testers out there as to how the silver standard has worked in practice.

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UPDATE ON TEAM OLA: A number of wonderful and generous people have pledged $500 since last Wednesday to sponsor my Chicago Marathon run in support of the Our Lady of the Angels Mission on Chicago's West Side. Thank you again! I am very grateful. 

I still have $500 to raise by Marathon day, Sunday, October 12th. Only four days left! If you haven't already done so, please consider sponsoring me in support of a group that does great work! Any gift of $75 or more will launch either the four Seven Voyages of Zylarthen physical booklets or a cool Steve Prefontaine DVD on an inexorable trajectory towards your home. My donation page is here:

Donate to Team Member Oakes Spalding (again, it goes directly to the Mission, not me).

And more information is here:

Mission of Our Lady of the Angels

Team OLA page with cool Team OLA Motivational Video

 Cheers again and please pray for me if you can.

Make Spalding Suffer

You know you want to.

Or, perhaps you just want to support the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels and the great work it does in Chicago's West Humboldt Park.

Or both, in which case you can kill two birds with one stone (without even needing a dexterity bonus).

The Chicago Marathon Team Our Lady of the Angels (Team OLA) is looking for support in the last week before the Marathon. And this runner is looking for sponsors to help him meet his fundraising goal.

For those of you who have already made a gift or who have spread the word,

Thank You.

In the bargain, I've made a number of new friends, which of course is great.

Two days ago, I made the first fundraising appeal here. But below are the pertinent links again:

Mission of Our Lady of the Angels

Team OLA page with cool Team OLA Motivational Video (emphasis on "cool")
Donate to Team Member Oakes Spalding (I know it says "to" but it's going to the Mission)

For the fun of it, I thought I would create some giving levels in the 'old school' style. The Marathon is 26.2 miles, so you can give x per mile translated out to the approximate values below. Interestingly, the gift amounts roughly approximate the experience point totals in some of the editions and clones.

MARATHON TEAM OLA GIFT MATRIX: 

Sponsorship Level	$ Per Mile		Gift Amount
Veteran	.50		10
Warrior	1		25
Swordsman	2		50
Hero	3		75
Swashbuckler	5		100
Myrmidon	10		250
Champion	20		500
Super Hero	50		1000
Lord	100		2500

I don't have specific benefits at each level, but I will commit to sending mint copies of the four Seven Voyages of Zylarthen booklets, to all donors of $75 or more. Or if you prefer, I'll zoom you a new DVD of the wonderful and inspirational bio-pic of the 1972 U.S. Olympian Steve Prefontaine, Without Limits.

If you make a major gift, I can't promise you a barony. But for better or worse, you'll have me as a devoted follower for the rest of your life. Or not, if you prefer. And to be serious, the Mission--including Father Lombardo, the nuns, postulants and lay supporters--will be blown away by your generosity.

We only have a week, so if you would like to help, time is of the essence. Pledges (without immediate payments) are welcome, but they would probably have to be done through me as the giving page only accepts credit cards (I think).

This will be my 9th marathon as a middle-aged geezer (or my 11th if you count the two I ran when I was fourteen). And though it won't be my fastest (that one will be next year if I remain injury free), it will certainly be the most important.

Cheers and thanks again!

Oakes

Fundraising Appeal For Chicago Marathon Team Our Lady of the Angels

This is only the second blog post I've written that has nothing to do with gaming. The non-gaming posts thus come to roughly 3% of the total. I promise to keep it that way.

It's also a fundraising appeal, not for me but from me as a member of the 2014 Our Lady of the Angels Chicago Marathon Running Team. 100% of the money goes to support the work of the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels on Chicago's West Side.

If a fundraising post annoys you, I completely understand. Come back for my next gaming post. No hard feelings. I say that sincerely.

In a moment, I'll say a little bit about the Mission. But first, the mechanics of what's going on: Team OLA (as we call ourselves) are a group of runners of all abilities and talents that are running the Chicago Marathon on October 11th to support the work of the Mission. The team includes three women religious, four priests, at least one seminarian and about sixty laypeople. Each us has pledged to raise at least $1,000. Since I've been recovering from injuries on and off for the last four months--two knee surgeries in the last two years--before being confident of my health a week or so ago, I haven't been actively fundraising (for fear I'd let the donors down if I didn't run). So my active push is starting today--with only ten days to go. I'll have my work cut out for me on those 26.2 miles. But I also have a lot to do in the next ten days. To be honest, I'm not worried about finishing as I've run ten marathons in the last ten years. But I want to make my fundraising goal and more. It's going to be hard, but with God's help and perhaps yours, I can do it.

I have a bit more to say about the Team and the Mission, but first, here are some links:

Mission of Our Lady of the Angels

Team OLA page with cool Team OLA Motivational Video (emphasis on "cool")

Donate to Team Member Oakes Spalding (I know it says "to" but it's going to the Mission)

Here's a picture of a dorky runner:

Now, here's some more information on the Team and the Mission:

The Team is led led by Sister Stephanie Baliga--a track star in college, who while nursing a broken foot felt the call to a religious vocation. She has been associated with the Mission for a number of years, but took her final vows last year.

Sister Stephanie is one of the most devout people--female or male--that I have ever met. For those of you interested in these sort of things, she and the other women religious on the team wear relatively modest attire--including a kerchief and light skirt. I say that only to point out that their obligations to remain faithful to their role as religious representatives, outweigh all other considerations.

Sister Stephanie is also fast. She will be starting in the Elite Corral for the marathon and hopes to break three hours.

She also has a million zillion friends. I still don't quite understand how or where they come from (college, I assume, for one). But if your mental picture of a nun (or priest) has ever been at least in part that of a lonely or shy person or whatever, you've never met Sister Stephanie.

Here's a video piece that a Chicago TV Station did last year on 'The Running Nun.'

The Mission of Our Lady of the Angels is located in Chicago's West Humboldt Park area--one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. It's led by Father Bob Lombardo of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. The mission is to assist the materially poor and to share the treasure of the Catholic Faith.

Assistance to the poor includes a monthly food pantry that serves about 700 families each month, distribution of clothing and household goods, emergency assistance to individuals and families in need, after school programming, senior citizens programming, community dinners and special events.

The explicitly religious aspect includes retreats, street evangelization at Mission organized summer block parties, preaching by Father Lombardo at Catholic and Christian venues, summer Bible camps and Eucharistic adoration.

As a personal aside, for those Catholics or non-Catholics depressed or annoyed at the political disputes seemingly raging within the church at the value of the 'practical' versus 'explicitly religious' (or whatever you want to call it) aspects of the Church's mission, the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels is a great example of how that's really a false choice. You can (and should) do both. So, for example, you can provide food to the poor (who, incidentally, at the moment are virtually all non-Catholic--also believe me, its a ton of food) while at the same time having daily Eucharistic adoration (at a small but often full chapel featuring mostly young men and women).

On a final and more sober note, as some of you may know, the current Mission is the resurrected form of the old mission and church at the same site. In the mid-twentieth century it was one of the largest and most active parishes in Chicago. Then, in 1958 there was a horrific fire in the school. 95 people perished (92 children and 3 sisters). It was one of the worst disasters in modern Chicago history. Partly due to the fire but for other reasons as well, the church, school, parish and neighborhood began a long decline. The parish and school officially closed in the 1990's.

In 2005 Cardinal George asked Father Lombardo to re-establish the Mission, and it's been growing since then. Among other things, after many years of work, the beautiful church on the site, which like many others in Chicago was on the list to be demolished, was restored.

As you've probably figured out by now, I think it's a great cause. If you'd like to help, you can support Team OLA in at least four ways:

1. Donate to our fundraising effort. (We only have ten more days!) Here again is the link to my fundraising page.

2. Share the blog post link or the link I will create on Google+ with those who you think might have the interest and means to support us.

3. Cheer us on at Marathon day, October 11th. Most of us will be wearing light blue Team OLA T-shirts.

4. Pray for the Mission and the runners. Each team member has an individual assigned to pray for us, but the more the better!

Finally, if you have any questions, feel free to email me at ospalding@saveversusallwands.com

Cheers and God bless you!

Oakes